Tech

Where Should Accountants Stand on Net Neutrality?

Who doesn’t love getting preferential treatment — even if you have to pay for it? Priority boarding on an airplane? TSA pre-check? Yes, sign me up! Really, any type of express lane is downright delicious. And, when it comes to the congested internet infrastructure, companies think so too. What company wouldn’t want to pay for their content to reach their customers at faster speeds than competitors?

The term “network neutrality” was introduced in a widely cited law article by Tim Wu. He proposed that an internet service provider should be required to treat all data from all content providers in the same way, much as other communications carriers cannot offer one deal to a potential customer without offering it to all.

Basically, Tim Wu had a dream that all data would be created equal — no throttling (read: slowing down delivery) of certain content to give other data “priority” treatment or access to a “fast lane” to reach customers more quickly.

The provisions… enshrine in EU law a user’s right to be “free to access and distribute information and content, run applications and use services of their choice”

It’s a mammoth step, even with a few caveats here and there to soften the stance.

… well, almost all inWhat accountant doesn’t love an exception to the general rule? Don’t worry, BEREC delivered. The main carve-out of the final net neutrality rules is for “specialized services” such as remote surgery and other real-time health services.

I don’t mind if someone brave enough to undergo remote surgery gets some special privileges when it comes to the internet’s strength and speed. My Facebook scroll can wait.

Pushing the envelopeMeanwhile, in the U.S. it is safe to say that most tech companies are supportive of net neutrality legislation. Too bad a handful of companies don’t want to play the game by the rules. It’s mainly large internet service providers (e.g., Verizon, AT&T, Comcast) — the same players who actively lobby against neutrality.

T-Mobile ONE “unlimited” plan that offers degraded service and spells out that certain services and types of data will require an additional fee. In other words, some data and services will receive preferential treatment on the T-Mobile network as long as the extortion is paid.

Most accountants I know, including myself, can’t do their job without a strong internet connection. I pay a small fortune for high speeds and don’t bat an eye. But, I assume all content is loading at the speed I pay to enjoy. What if Intuit started bribing Comcast to ramp up the delivery speed of their online platforms using some type of priority lane? Xero wouldn’t like that very much…

Hypothetically, T-Mobile or another wireless carrier may be willing to work out a deal with Intuit to let you use QuickBooks unrestricted and with no overage fee after you hit your data cap for the month if Intuit paid the company enough (a practice known as zero-rating). This practice is legally frowned upon under current regulations, but permutations like the T-Mobile ONE plan continue to pop up and companies continue to repackage zero-rating to see if it will slip by regulators.

Not everyone is a fanInternet service providers (ISPs) are not very happy about net neutrality regulation and it’s not without reason. HBR poses an ominous question of:

When do these rules become too burdensome for carriers, reducing investment in infrastructure, which hurts everyone?

Anti-regulation lobbyists are also grumbling. For example, analyst Doug Brake tells Fortune “it was good that zero-rating, traffic prioritization, and specialized services weren’t being banned outright [by BEREC], but the restrictions on these practices were overly proscriptive.”

It’s good point to bring up at this stage in the game. Accountants are very familiar with what happens when regulations include too many prescriptive bright-line rules and companies have the tendency to get into ethical trouble trying to push the rules to their limit.

At the end of the day, however, accountants ought to see the value of net neutrality regulations.

Zero-rating helps transform the internet from a permission-less environment… into one in which developers effectively need to seek approval from ISPs before deploying their latest groundbreaking technology.

That’s bad — obviously.

What do you think? Should accountants care about defending net neutrality?

Just so we’re clear, Net Neutrality (at least in the US) is taking something that’s that has been running pretty darn well on its own for the past 20 years and put the FCC in charge of it.

As much as I distrust Comcast, CenturyLink, AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, and the hundreds of other ISPs out there, I’m not quite to the point that I trust the FCC more.

iamthelolrus

I would completely agree with you if there were actual competition in the space. However, it really grinds my gears when local (state mandated) monopolies get to decide what content I get and how fast I get it.

dumpus

It’s been running pretty darn well on it’s own for the past 20 years because everyone agreed to a set of unwritten “Gentleman’s Rules” and have largely stuck with it to the benefit of everyone.

What’s happening now is that some (exclusively the ISP’s) don’t wish to play by those rules anymore in the interest of greed. What everyone but the ISP’s want is to codify those previously understood “Gentleman’s Rules” to ensure that the system that everyone thrived in previously is the system that everyone gets to thrive under in the future. Unfortunately, the only way to formally implement those previously informal rules and ensure that all participants are bound to them is through government action.

And it’s quite disingenuous to say “putting the FCC in charge of it”, when all they’d be doing is stating that “all traffic shall be non-prioritized” in no uncertain terms.

peakfreak

I don’t care what they do, so long as I can watch March Madness on my 6 monitors at the office during busy season.

Another exKPMGer

Why the hell is this the banner story right now? GC is seriously slipping. Bad columns, and not very many of them to boot. Occasionally something good pops in open items, but I’m getting a little tired of minimal content updates and content updates that aren’t worthwhile. Such as this one.

cpanum31

IMHO, I could not have said it better.

All the serious problems the profession has and we get an article about all the people sitting on their buts in front of a TV don’t want to pay for the carrier’s services.

sheesh

If the whole profession implodes any more we know whose fault it is.

Steve Dave

I bet the next banner story will be another stupid Bitcoin article…

dumpus

or a story about THE MACHINES terkin er jerbs.

AaronBalake

Survey says………no one cares.

Mose Schrute

Will your new buddy @LordTreasurer chime in on this thread?

SouthernCPA

Internet access is a utility. What if your phone service was throttled? What if your electric or water was throttled because someone was willing to pay more?